Life on Urantia at the Start of the New Millenium
by Leonard Ablieter
I am compelled to present this broad stroke sketch of life as I see it exist on this our planet URANTIA, in this our country, at the beginning of this new millennium. It is a very general picture, but I believe it captures the essence of the dynamics confronting us in our lives and governing our environment, the context within which we are trying to apply and spread the teachings of The URANTIA Book. It also is a bleak picture, quite at odds with the notion of the privileged status one might expect of the country chosen for the Fifth Epochal Revelation.
It is said that 80% of the population has the basic innate “goodness” that is desirable in a civilized society. One might expect that by virtue of their much larger number these 80% in time would convert the remaining 20%. However, the problem is that the remaining 20% largely are in control of things and this situation is not going to change in the foreseeable future. It’s not that there is open confrontation between the groups. If so it might actually be helpful as it would at least define the issues and raise awareness. Instead we have a situation where the 80% are being manipulated essentially without being aware of it and at least part of the 20% who are doing the manipulating may be unaware that they are doing so. Indeed many of those being manipulated unintentionally support the manipulators by buying into their agenda. As much as I’d like to see this change, and I am an optimist at heart, I see the deck stacked against this happening and from a purely logical point of view only can see things getting worse before they get better. We are trapped in a catch 22 process of being controlled by the System with a capital S while at the same time continuously strengthening it by our own active support of it, a paradigm perfectly developed by Charles Reich of The Greening of America fame in his later book, Bucking the System.
It is the 20% who run the System. They in effect control the world.
hether they have a plan or not is immaterial. I don’t think there is a plan, and there is no need for one. The System not only is self-perpetuating, it also by its very nature automatically pursues the goals deemed desirable by those in power and those aspiring to be. And it is seen by the majority of the 80% as both necessary and worthwhile, and most of them are trying their best to be part of it. Very briefly, it operates through and comprises our schools, colleges and universities; our governmental institutions; the media; business; corporations; the medical/pharmaceutical complex; agriculture and the food industry; and our non-profit and charitable institutions. The churches have become largely irrelevant and to the extent they exert any influence it tends to support rather than moderate the natural course of the System. (Fundamentalist Islam is an exception, but it is a fanatical movement and fanatics have never been able to advance society, and their demonstrated means speak for themselves. And lest it needs pointing out, the end does not justify the means).
The main reason for the success of the System and its ability to perpetuate itself is embedded in the very nature of our educational system, which tends to reward, and thus raise to the top, individuals with the same kinds of characteristics. These people tend to be ultra-competitive, egocentric and egotistical, arrogant, manipulative, enamored of power, aggressive, self-reliant and have a strong drive to succeed. Perhaps most important of all, they come to understand the System and learn to take advantage of it. Having risen to the top of the educational system they frequently move on to positions of power throughout the rest of the System and thus have the opportunity to shape policy, ensuring continuation of the status quo. I should point out here that many of these people have other qualities as well, qualities which may be very desirable and beneficial for society. It’s just that by virtue of the attributes listed they were able to rise to the top. They used the System to get what they wanted.
The driving force of the System is greed. Greed probably is a basic human trait which needs to be overcome through the evolution of society. Unfortunately, in most parts of the world, evolution seems to have regressed in this respect, with the First World leading the way in exhibiting the effects and most of the other countries trying to catch up. This has brought us to virtually absolute materialism. Today money is the only yardstick. Everything has a price, including human life. Success is measured in income and assets and status by wealth displayed. With few exceptions even scientific achievement is measured mostly by its potential economic benefits. Much research which might benefit humanity in terms of better health, for example, is left undone because it doesn’t hold the promise of large future profits. Efficiency is god. And the System not only engendered these values but by its very nature enforces them and makes them acceptable and part of the paradigm.
Some of the consequences of this are that we now live in a world where food and drink, essential to human life, are controlled by agribusiness and a handful of multinational corporations, whose sole interest is their bottom line and the value of their shares, with nutrition, real nutrition and not chemical additives, not just taking a back seat but being irrelevant. We have a medical system where doctors are rewarded not to treat patients and a pharmaceutical industry that not only promotes expensive toxic drugs, which often have limited benefits, but seeks to suppress the use of and even information about age-old natural remedies which are less expensive and sometimes more effective.
Indeed, we have a “health” industry which essentially does not cure anything but prescribes drugs and treatments which alleviate symptoms at the expense of often serious side effects as well as high cost. (Exception: Traditional medicine is superb at dealing with trauma and reconstructive and replacement surgery).
We have a chemical company which produces genetically engineered plants not to produce a better tasting or more nutritious crop (which might be acceptable) but to make the plants resistant to heavier applications of a toxic herbicide it produces. That same company until recently was going to include a “terminator gene” in some crops which would prevent the plants from bearing seed in order to force farmers to buy fresh seed every year. The soft drink industry recently reported that the time was near when people throughout the world would be drinking more soft drinks than water, a frightening development considering their known deleterious effects on our health (especially that of our children), and typically exploitative of the innocent when one considers that most of the growth is expected in Third World countries where the cost of soft drinks relative to income borders on the exorbitant and the population, and again the children, are easy prey to sophisticated advertising and marketing.
We have a government which makes a study on military personnel, which concludes that homogenization of milk causes arterial lesions with resultant increased cholesterol deposits, and does nothing about it. This same government, according to a cover story in Time, after developing its original version of the Food Pyramid after much research, changed that version to include a dairy element that originally was not considered necessary by the scientists who did the research, after being pressured by the dairy industry to do so. We have school systems which routinely serve junk food in their cafeterias and allow soft drink machines on school premises for the purpose of deriving additional income, without regard to the effects on the health of students. And we have companies who legally and with tacit government approval, in the name of recycling, produce fertilizer and soil amendments containing heavy metals in large quantities from industrial hazardous waste, to be spread on our fields and gardens.
A continuous stream of what is best described as propaganda is fed to the public at large by the mainstream media, who are essentially under de facto control of their advertisers. Highly effective advertising supported by huge resources, selective and often slanted reporting, and entertainment as barren of cultural value as our processed food is of nutrition, purposely designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator and as a result lowering the cultural niveau rather than raising it, all for the purpose of greater advertising exposure and consequent potential financial return, pour forth on the airwaves and in print to shape our very values. Any large-scale effort to educate the public that this is really happening, that this is what we’re doing to ourselves, is impossible for lack of equal access to the media. The only access there is are books. But as a tool to educate on a large scale books are ineffective, unless they are supported widely by the mainstream media. And the cycle thus feeds on itself.
The process I’m describing includes all aspects of our existence and to cover all the elements involved would require that I write a book. But its insidious and ultimately most destructive effect is best seen by focusing on just two: food and health. The German philosopher, thinker and author Schopenhauer said: Health, by itself isn’t everything, but without it everything else is nothing. Very succinct and very true. And health is inextricably entwined with food. We are what we eat.
The industrial food, which is literally being shoved down our throats by a highly integrated and mechanized industry, not only has ceased to provide the nutrition we need, but is full of toxic chemicals. It is supplemented with additional chemicals, in the vain hope to enhance nutritional value. No money is available (the System at work) to follow up on research which shows that chemical additives in fact do not have the same effect on living organisms as the original substances they are intended to replace, or that there are numerous other substances that, in ways as yet not clearly understood, need to be present for optimal benefit. And any notion that living food contains subtle energies necessary for health, which are lost in processing and long-term storage, barely merits a supercilious chuckle.
Likewise, the traditional approach of the health industry (with the above mentioned exception) appears to be headed down a dead-end street. Despite enormous expenditures by the industry (and enormous profits by at least the pharmaceutical part of it) and by patients (whose main concern these days often not is the kind of job they take but what kind of medical benefits it offers) it really hasn’t cured anything. In fact, it seems to be making things worse. After untold billions of dollars having been spent in the attempt to eradicate it cancer is still with us, in fact, its incidence appears to be on the increase. Almost half our women run the risk of getting breast cancer and ever younger individuals are stricken by some form of cancer, which puts the lie to the contention that cancer has always been around but that its increased frequency is the result of more people living longer. In fact, while more people indeed live longer, life expectancy has not increased by much. Increased life expectancy is largely a myth based on the statistical quirk that since the early 1900’s or so more people have survived the most disease and accident-prone years by making it past 30, thus increasing the pool of individuals who could go on to live to old age. So we get more old people but they’re really not getting that much older.
Almost 50 million Americans are overweight and the rest of the world is catching up. We now have diabetes in children. A recent report of the National Institutes of Health estimates that one in three children born in 2,000 will contract diabetes by 2,030. ADD/hyper activity syndrome is getting out of control. It has been reported that teachers in some schools require that parents whose children suffer from this disorder put them on the drug of choice, which since has been reported to have serious permanent side effects down the road. The fact that elimination of refined carbohydrates, especially sugar, also appears to eliminate the condition is not publicized. Allergies abound, most caused by dairy products. Yet the public is exhorted by government, the media and advertising to be sure to include dairy in their diet because of its health giving benefits, a message almost completely untrue, but extremely profitable, as is the sale of drugs, which relieve allergy symptoms without curing them.
Food and health, as previously pointed out, are inextricably linked and a major part of the fault for our condition lies with the industrial food we eat and the toxins we are exposed to on a daily basis, in everything from that beautiful, sprayed and waxed apple to the laundry detergent which is absorbed by our skin from our clothing 24 hours a day. The health industry bears equal responsibility for our deteriorating health by not alerting and educating the public and by refusing to follow up on research that would lead to cures rather than continued attempts at alleviation of symptoms. Research into the use of herbal and homeopathic remedies is neglected or discouraged, except for the search for the so-called “active ingredients”, which conceivably could be made into another patented prescription drug. Some 50% of Americans over the age of 50 are on at least one prescription drug, a “drug benefit” is the number 1 goal of the AARP, and nursing homes are a growth industry.
Perhaps the saddest thing is to visit a shopping mall and see mothers feeding caffeinated soft drinks to their toddlers, buying them junk food, and giving them cheap sweets consisting essentially of sugar, artificial color and flavor, without having the slightest idea of the long-term and permanent damage they are causing their offspring. They are lulled and seduced by the Pied Piper of the media, and when the children get sick they accept it as a normal part of growing up. They take them to their doctor who most likely will prescribe some medicine or other, which alleviates the symptoms but does nothing about the root of the problem. And the most dangerous part of this paradigm of profits and efficiency above all else is that this slow but continuous poisoning of the system eventually will begin to affect the brain (ADD/Hyperactivity Syndrome; brain tumors in children) of these youngsters, and these children are our future.
Some early signs of change are noticeable, albeit those who are involving themselves in the budding changes are often viewed to be members of a fringe group and definitely not part of mainstream society. Perhaps the first truly significant milestone achieved by the forces for change was the issuance by the U.S. Department of Agriculture of its long awaited set of rules governing organic agriculture recently. This did not happen without a struggle. The forces of the System were able to delay this effort for some 8 years and almost derail it. The set of rules initially proposed by the USDA were so watered down and biased in favor of chemical agriculture as to have been worse than meaningless. But what amounted to the second largest write-in campaign of several hundred thousand letters and postcards by a concerned public caused the Federal Government to respect the will of the people and issue a set of rules no less stringent than those issued by the State of California in 1990, rules which up to now have been the de facto standard world-wide. (Similar rules were also issued by Oregon and Texas). Today organic agriculture is growing at a rate of nearly 30% a year, though as yet still comprising only 3% percent of total production. But the Organic Consumers Association has set itself the goal of raising this percentage to 10% by 2010.
On the medical front dissatisfaction with traditional medicine by a significant segment of the public is being reflected by a growing interest in alternative or complementary medicine, the latter combining elements of alternative and traditional medicine. There is renewed interest in homeopathy and herbal medicine and even Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine are concepts no longer unknown today by many members of the public. Non-traditional treatments however face virtually insurmountable obstacles in the form of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as well as the American Medical and Dental Associations, all of which admittedly serve legitimate protective purposes.
Unfortunately the powers of these organizations at times seem to be used more in protecting the interests of the industry and their members rather than those of the public. One example is the virtual persecution of a U.S. scientist with a doctoral degree in physiology who at one time was hauled off in handcuffs by Arizona State Police and driven from San Diego to jail in Arizona on 7-year old charges of practicing medicine without a license, charges which subsequently were thrown out. Not long ago the clinic of this scientist in Tijuana, Mexico was raided by Mexican police and closed on charges of technical violations. Spokespersons for the clinic publicly state that pressure was brought on Mexican authorities by U.S. interests to act. The “crime” of this scientist is to have discovered, among other things, unconventional, non-surgical and non-drug treatments for cancer and other chronic diseases which are proving successful. These discoveries have potentially wide-ranging beneficial effects in that they deal with root causes, and therefore the possibility of actual cure, instead of treatment of symptoms. At stake are billions of dollars in profits and the System, instead of supporting these findings and engaging in additional research for the benefit of humanity, perceives this scientist as a threat and is reacting in predictable fashion.
What appears to be a victory for the forces for change in California was the dissolution by state authorities of the California Dental Board for its repeated refusal to openly discuss and reveal to the public the dangers of dentistry using amalgam fillings. This problem was first publicized by a U.S. dentist, Dr. Price, in the 1930’s and while in some European countries alternative, mercury-free dentistry is wide spread, his writings in the U.S. have remained largely unnoticed if not suppressed. Perhaps the recent action by the State of California will have the benefit of increasing public awareness.
What has been more or less a behind-the-scenes struggle has broken out into open warfare in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. There alternative medicine was about to be regulated out of existence when public pressure managed to get a law on the docket, which would specifically protect the right of the public to access to alternative medicine. With a large majority of the province behind it the law was passed, only to be subsequently overturned by government “fiat”. This incident clearly demonstrates the ruthlessness of the “20%”.
Other areas of incipient change, important because they affect children, are small movements back to natural child-birth and breast feeding. Numerous studies show that children born and raised in such an environment have fewer childhood diseases and are healthier in general, with life-time positive effects. There is a small movement away from disposable diapers which use chemicals that have been linked to the frequent occurrence of diaper rash and skin allergies. Unfortunately information about these movements is not widely available and confined to the alternative press and the Internet. And in the poorer countries, sadly, the movement in the opposite direction is gaining ever more momentum, with parents abandoning their healthier natural practices in favor of those promoted by the developed world, again lured and misled by advertising and the media.
All of this is necessarily very general and perhaps over-simplified. But it describes the state of affairs as I see it, after having done a fair amount of reading and research, and if this is the way things truly are (and they might be worse, hardly better) I don’t see how we can possibly achieve much improvement any time soon. As mentioned earlier, I have covered only two areas, food and health. But the forces of exploitation are at work everywhere. The momentum is with the 20% in spite of the changes that have begun to show themselves. Perhaps the forces for change will soon gain the critical mass required for swinging the rest, in the manner of “the 100th monkey effect”. Or perhaps the System obeys the laws of Chaos Theory, which holds that small events can have large effects. But a change brought about in this manner would likely be abrupt and well, chaotic, entailing possible social upheaval.
The preferred solution might be evolutionary change. As it is said in The URANTIA Book, evolution occurs in spurts, and just possibly one of these spurts might advance us enough to give us the critical mass to break the stranglehold the System has on our development and bring about the change we need so much.
Growing your local association
By Meredith Van Woert
UAUS Membership Committee Chair
One important thing, in my opinion, in growing your IUA is that you are not alone in wanting it to grow. I say this because the plan I’m going to suggest to you will work best if you are a part of a team. You can call yourselves the OUA Revitalization Team.
As you and your team begin to discuss the process of growing your group, keep in mind the purpose of IUA–the in-depth study and dissemination of The Urantia Book. That’s a pretty broad field. You and your group should discuss what aspect of this purpose is most appealing and decide what you want to accomplish this year. Set a goal. I’m not necessarily talking about numbers of members, but rather the doing of a service project as it is related to study and dissemination. Five people can be very effective in doing a project.
Following proper procedures is an important aspect of any group work. IUA reflects the high standard of Urantia Foundation and you and your group should be sensitive to our interdependence with UF and be able to categorically affirm your support and pledge your support of the work of the Foundation. For me, this is the bottom line. We ask people to submit a completed membership form, signed. You should have one on file for every current and past member of your group. As people apply for membership to OUA, you and your team will process those applications as you receive them. That means you will phone the individuals. And we can discuss more of that process at another time.
I will briefly (I hope) summarize a method of upbuilding your IUA as follows:
1. Set a date, time and location (for 20 – 40 people or so, six to eight weeks out to give you time in which to work) for a meeting and social gathering.
2. Create a database of readers you want to invite.
3. Create an invitation on letterhead to be included with a membership package which should be mailed out 30 days prior to the event.
4. Create a program that will take place at the meeting. Maybe you can elect the next officers whose terms are up and have a topical study. You can make a plan for a service project or whatever. Set the date for the next get together. I’m sure you have many creative people there. You don’t have to come up with all the ideas. Tap the talents of your group.
5. Put your officers to work: secretary to keep notes, minutes, records, letterhead; treasurer to do accounting, collect dues, write checks; vice president to assist the president in any capacity particularly if the president needs an extra hand. Do you have a membership chair? This person maintains the membership records and is key in the processing of applications as they come in. The membership chair recommends to the governing board that a new applicant be accepted as a member. And the GB makes the final decision. It’s in the IUA Bylaws. Membership is not automatic just because a person filled out a form.
6. Keep the energy going. It takes work to keep a group together, especially since some readers who are keen to be a part of IUA live far away. You may find supportive readers in outlying areas of Oregon. Look for them and foster them. Don’t be disappointed if you do not achieve the results you hope for. Commit yourself to the long haul, and keep in touch with the members of your group. Find a way to remind them of the vitality of IUA, our principles and purposes. There is no substitute for personal contact.
The package contains several items: a cover letter on letterhead; a copy of the Provisional IUA Charter; “The Meaning of IUA,” an article by Seppo Kanerva; an IUA application for membership; and a copy of the DoT. Each package is mailed in a medium sized envelope with the registered mark (you can get these from Cathy) at a cost of $1.06 postage and should show the return address of the Chair of your membership committee.
The cover letter is a friendly invitation to attend an activity to meet like-minded readers. People are asked to return by mail the membership application and the committee’s work is to process those in advance by contacting the people, usually by phone. Applications may trickle in over time.
Though you did not ask me about finding readers in Oregon, I would like to suggest that you harvest the names from IUA Outreach that you have been receiving from Cathy and more recently Ellen Gaynor. This is a group of people who are rich in enthusiasm for the book. Many may be newer readers. Be sensitive in your use of these names to make sure these people do not land on someone’s personal database for purposes other than IUA.
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